[Dovecot] dovecot-1.1.3 failure to install

[tonj]

I'm using Fedora 9
I downloaded dovecot-1.1.3.tar.gz and extracted it. I then opened a 
terminal in the extracted window. Your install instructions say:

For most people, the usual:
  ./configure
  make
  sudo make install

but when I did them I got

[root at mydomain dovecot-1.1.3]# ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... 
no
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl.exe... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

[root at mydomain dovecot-1.1.3]# make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

[root at mydomain dovecot-1.1.3]# sudo make install
make: *** No rule to make target `install'.  Stop.
[root at mydomain dovecot-1.1.3]#

can you tell me why the install won't work? thanks for any advice.